AVONDALE, Ariz. 
Jimmie Johnson might have had the fastest car at the end of Sunday’s NASCAR race at Phoenix International Raceway.

But we’ll never know, because Carl Edwards might have been a little bit smarter in addition to getting a timely push from a fellow Ford driver willing to take one for the team.

From the inside lane, Edwards jumped Johnson on the final, overtime restart and ran away to victory in the Subway Fresh Fit 500.

Johnson rallied in the last quarter-mile to turn back Denny Hamlin’s wild bid for second — the runner-up finish giving the Daytona 500 winner from El Cajon a 1-2 start to the season that equaled his 2006 opening that led to the first of his record five straight NASCAR championships.

But Johnson wasn’t exactly pleased with the results at PIR.

He believed Edwards broke NASCAR’s restart protocol to win the race.

“You are supposed to maintain the speed of the pace car before the re-start,” Johnson said. “Edwards dropped back. When he did, I lost sight of him to my left, I had to slow ... and he took off.”

Took off with a big push from 2012 NASCAR champion Brad Keselowski. By the time the pack got to the first turn of the green-white-checkered, two-lap overtime, Edwards was safely in front.

“That was huge,” Edwards said of Keselowski’s push. “Everyone knows Brad and I don’t have the best history. That was an amazing example of what we can do together to get Ford to victory lane.

“That was very cool for Brad to push us. That gave us a big lead into turn one. Brad could have gone three wide there and that might not have helped either of us.”

As for Johnson’s charge that he slowed before the restart: “I thought Johnson was playing a trick,” said Edwards. “I thought to myself, ‘He’s speeding up.’ I wasn’t trying to slow down. When I went, he wasn’t looking. That, coupled with the push from Keselowski, gave me a pretty big lead.”

“That bothered me,” said Hamlin, whose Toyota was positioned behind Johnson in the outside line on the final restart. “I was thinking that was Jimmie’s race to win. I don’t know what Carl did, but he dropped back and then turned it on when Jimmie slowed so not to be in front at the line.”

Passing the leader before a restart is a major no-no.

The overtime restart actually marked the second time over the final 80 laps that Edwards seized the lead at something far below race speed.

Coming down pit lane at the 45 mph limit on the 239th lap, Dale Earnhardt Jr. was on the inside and had his front bumper ahead of Edwards as the leaders ran side-by-side. But from the outside lane in front of Edwards, Casey Mears forced Earnhardt to slow as he made a hard left into his pits — cutting off Earnhardt and giving Edwards the lead.